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This article also available as a podcast on my Substack Part VII: The Black Climbing Community  It’s too soon: too soon for films such as Hip Hop Gone Wild to be mocking Black culture up on the screen. Too demeaning to the community members who make up the climbing community who are Black, especially women.ContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part VII”

Part VI: Non-Black People of Color and Hip Hop    There are more people involved in Hip Hop than only Black and white folks. What about Hip Hop and non-black people of color? If the negative aspect of appropriation has to do with privilege and power, is it negative when non-black people of color take HipContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part VI”

This article also available as a podcast on my Substack here. Part V: Snousha Snousha    No Man’s Land Film Festival offers $2,500 to two winners who submit: “project title (or working title), applicant’s name, text of LOI [Letter of Interest].”34 Hip Hop Gone Wild was granted money to make a film in 2017, possibly withoutContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part V”

Part IV: Climbing Demographics and Inclusion   What are the stats on how many Black women, trans, and non-binary people are actually in the climbing community? According to the American Alpine Club 2019 State of Climbing Report, 41% of all climbers surveyed are female and 1% of all climbers surveyed are African American.28 1% surveyed preferredContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part IV”

Part III: “Counterculture”   In the early 2000’s, around the time of the first Black ascents of Too-tok-ah-noo-lah, a climber named Chris Sharma was on the rise. He had started climbing around 1983: only 16 years after the last edition of the Negroe Travellers Green Book published. His parents most likely witnessed and/or participated in theContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part III”

Part II: The Birth of Climbing    The hippie movement began in the 1960’s and found its peak in the Vietnam War in 1965. “The vast majority of hippies were young, white, middle-class men and women who felt alienated from mainstream middle-class society and resented the pressure to conform to the “normal” standards of appearance, employmentContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part II”

Part I: Setting the Stage “With coloured pigmentation you must accept that your historically pivotal leaders will more than likely be killed With darker pigmentation you become an example of exoticism under a western microscope Elements of your identity appropriated and then sold back to you, sold back to you with less than clever taglinesContinueContinue reading “Hip Hop in Climbing: Part I”

Smith Rock, Oregon. Rightful land of the The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs This article also available as a podcast here. I finished my first full length article in December of 2020. You will read it in the next post. Today is April of 2021. The road to writing the article was a long one,ContinueContinue reading “How, Why: The Beginning”